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An anonymous reader writes "A study out of McGill University sought to examine historical temperature data going back 500 years in order to determine the likelihood that global warming was caused by natural fluctuations in the earth's climate. The study concluded there was less than a 1% chance the warming could be attributed to simple fluctuations. 'The climate reconstructions take into account a variety of gauges found in nature, such as tree rings, ice cores, and lake sediments. And the fluctuation-analysis techniques make it possible to understand the temperature variations over wide ranges of time scales. For the industrial era, Lovejoy's analysis uses carbon-dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels as a proxy for all man-made climate influences – a simplification justified by the tight relationship between global economic activity and the emission of greenhouse gases and particulate pollution, he says. ... His study [also] predicts, with 95% confidence, that a doubling of carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere would cause the climate to warm by between 2.5 and 4.2 degrees Celsius. That range is more precise than – but in line with — the IPCC's prediction that temperatures would rise by 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius if CO2 concentrations double.'"

Yeah? What's your solution? We absolutely, positively need petroleum right now in order to exist. Without it, we'd have to fall back to an 1800's agrarian existence, farming with horses and oxen, and OBTW we couldn't produce enough food for the vast majority of people to survive. We need modern farming methods for that, and that requires petroleum to fertilize it, petroleum to work the land, petroleum to move the food, and petroleum to heat homes and so forth.

The only way to NOT use petroleum RIGHT NOW is to kill about 90% of the population, world-wide. Simply making things more efficient isn't going to work, we're already too close to our capabilities for that.

The solution in the short term is to use the best methods to obtain petroleum based products, fracking, to keep costs down so we have enough research money to throw into things like geothermal electricity, battery technology, and geo-engineering solutions to removing CO2 from the atmosphere. That might have a chance. But simply complaining about those who are going about the business of making things better for us NOW is of absolutely no use whatsoever.

The US has seen a minor decrease in carbon emissions [nytimes.com] over the last 5 years or so, but this likely at least in part due to the financial crisis. There has been no long-term decrease over the "last 20 years", as you state, so the US isn't setting an example in cutting emissions. What matters, then, is total current emissions [wikipedia.org], where the US second only to China. The US emitted 5.4 million tonnes in 2010. By comparison, India (one of the countries you single out) and the EU have combined emissions of 5.7 million tonnes. India and China have very much larger populations. The US emissions per capita for 2012 are 16.4 tonnes, whereas China's are 7.1 and India's a paltry 1.6. Clearly the US has a lot of work to do.

I don't get it, after reading the comments here, why is there so much resistance accept that man is causing climate change? Just thinking logically, it makes sense. We're taking carbon that's been buried for millions of years, and then burning it, on a huge scale. How can this not affect the climate? I actually hope that the climate skeptics are right.

Ummm the real science has been done and it's overwhelmingly in the favor of climate change. The idea that "two sides" are equal is bullshit, the same way you wouldn't treat a creationist who believed the earth and life was 6000 years old on an equal level with evolution of life on earth.

The idea that "both sides" deserve consideration is just fucking nonsense.

"Your post is self-defeating. First you claim no one is an authority on what he or she knows, then you claim to know something "

No it isn't self defeating, there are people who CAN reason through natural unconscious superiority, not that they are able to take credit for that. Because smart people are unable to justify why it is they know what they know because it simply takes too much time. i.e. our brains simply do not work like we think they do. Consider if I asked you how much a given representation of really boring bits of your everyday visual field cost in biological terms (how much does it cost to perceive a door, a car, etc). You would have no fucking answer, yet you are able to do it. So we are capable of knowing things and not being able to explain why we know them. The hard part is trying to explain to OTHER PEOPLE not because they are stupid but because they are unaware that they are flawed (aka it's a time vs resources vs what is that animals modus operandi problem). Human beings are locked in their brain circuitry, you search whats in your memory to make a judgement, the problem is you can't see the contents of your own memory. Most of the information you're using to make judgments is not available to your conscious awareness.

I'm interested in truth for no political reason, I just want to know how the universe works, but for others they see it as an attack on their religion, politics, etc.

The problem is to find truth you have to take the attitude to rip it apart all the time (how can this be wrong? etc?). The problem is you wouldn't be able to know if you were in a position to do this unless you already possessed that unconscious superiority. Now this doesn't mean it's impossible for you to learn, it just means you'd have to spend an inordinate amount of time with a fine tooth comb going over what it is you know to find the contradictions.

Most of this is really just a lack of time in one's life to ferret out one's own hidden false premises that are just beyond the edge of your conscious awareness.

And I know you've never done it, to really find what is true requires unreal dedication few people have and you have to do it not in an argumentative environment or mode of operation because you want to not deceive yourself. When you're trying to "win" you're not trying to understand. The natural world is an unfolding process and that is the approach you have to take.

Because the debate has been politized by people with money on the line. They have a vested interest in claiming that global warming is not caused by humans, which is, as you point out, patently retarded. But there is another problem in addition to that: because the debate has been so politicized, sometimes the science gets sucked into the shit-slinging as well, and when that happens it leads to bad science, which is a legitimate concern. The problem with bad science is that it can be attacked by legitimate scientists, which the Oil Barons can then use to say "look! look! the science isn't settled! We're right!" even though the science very clearly is settled and they're not right at all.

Basically the global warming 'debate' is such a clusterfuck because the pro-oil lobby can spin it any way they want because the public in general doesn't understand how the scientific process works. That's what leads to situations where there are 10,000 studies claiming anthropogenic global warming is real for every 2 studies that claim it isn't on the one hand, and the public at large thinking the debate isn't settled on the other.

Because embracing anthropic climate change involves drastic controls on emissions, manufacturing, and energy generation (specifically coal) as well as being an excuse to raise a variety of taxes on an already strained economy. If something's going to hit them in the pocket people are going to want a lot of good reasons to pay up.

Personally I reckon that human activity probably does play a reasonably large part in accelerating climate change that was happening anyway (although 99% sets off my bullshit meter given that we're in an interglacial period), or pushing it over the point where we won't return to the next ie age, but in order to address it we'd have to get developing titans like India and China to play along, and good luck with that.

The best policy for the forward thinking nation is perhaps to simply prepare for flooding and adverse weather conditions.

Personally I reckon that human activity probably does play a reasonably large part in accelerating climate change that was happening anyway (although 99% sets off my bullshit meter given that we're in an interglacial period)

It doesn't say that 99+% of the warming is anthropogenic, it says that there's 99+% certainty that the warming is less than X percent natural or something like that (with X being...what? 100%? 95%?).

The REALLY funny thing is humans have already altered the environment so drastically you'd think it would be gospel to think we are responsible for our own environment.

Europe, for instance, used to be covered in old growth forest, with lots of animals, etc. We cut it all down, went to the new world and repeated. Just look at old paintings of America (like the hudson school) from the 1700s to see how it's changed.

And we've done some pretty gnarly things. The romans, to discourage people from fighting them

Temperature goes up more or less linearly, and CO2 goes up more or less linearly. Thus they are well-correlated. There's not a lot of power to that correlation, as the article demonstrates itself by trying it with different lags (from 0 to 20 years -- would have been interesting if he'd tried negative lags); the data is too featureless to show anything interesting.

Folks, there is no doubt that man causes some degree of global warming. It may even be significant.

But putting forward a very questionable "study" with little practical "science" and having almost nothing that can be repeated or validated does not help the cause of proving global warming. It harms it! With each one of these "studies" it makes me wonder why there isn't some expert who has proven the thesis, with so many interested "scientists".

All these so called scientists, spend 4 years in bachelors degree, 2 more for masters and four or five years to get a PhD. Work for about 80K a year median wage. They create these scare mongering stories to gin up grant money, totally untrustworthy.

On the other hand the media consultants employed by the billionaire owners of coal, oil, petroleum companies and investments in forestry products have absolutely no conflict of interest and they speak the original unvarnished truth.

I mean, who would you trust? Some one who is smart enough to make millions of dollars working for billionaires? Or the fools who spend so much of time studying and ending up working for a pittance? If these so called scientists are so smart why aren't they billionaires and millionaires? Shows who is smart and who you should listen to.

I wonder why this topic is so much discussed in the USA. In every other country climate change and the fact that we, humans, are causing it is accepted as a scientific fact. However, in the US, there is still a large fraction who doubt it or ignore it. And I am wondering why is that so?

A political religious right, and a faux news channel that has no interest in reporting actual news, and a "democracy" in which politicians cannot be elected without bribes from big business (colloquially known as "donations".)

"8th December 2010 13:24 GMT - A group of top NASA and NOAA scientists say that current climate models predicting global warming are far too gloomy, and have failed to properly account for an important cooling factor which will come into play as CO2 levels rise."

PARIS — Forests play a larger role in Earth's climate system than previously suspected for both the risks from deforestation and the potential gains from regrowth, a benchmark study released Thursday has shown.

The study, published in Science, provides the most accurate measure so far of the amount of greenhouse gases absorbed from the atmosphere by tropical, temperate and boreal forests, researchers said.

"This is the first complete and global evidence of the overwhelming role of forests in removing anthropogenic carbon dioxide," said co-author Josep Canadell, a scientist at CSIRO, Australia's national climate research centre in Canberra.

"If you were to stop deforestation tomorrow, the world's established and regrowing forests would remove half of fossil fuel emissions," he told AFP, describing the findings as both "incredible" and "unexpected".

Also odd how this guy in 2007 was able to predict this winter's 100-year record breaking cold from things the IPCC have nothing to do with climate:

People have made up their minds unfortunately. Changes in climate can easily be brushed off as natural variation. A few days of locally cold weather is enough to re-enforce a denier's belief that global warming is a farce.

Over time the consequences will become increasingly hard to ignore and people will suffer. As is typical, the poor will suffer the worse. Ironically, many otherwise conservative organizations such as insurance companies will be willing accept global warming as fact because it gives them an excuse to raise their rates in coastal areas.

The proxies are VERIFIED against each other, and over the time span that we DO have accurate instrumental records. Guess what, they match up, minus normal statistical uncertainty which is continuously further and further reduced by incorporating as many independent observations as possible. There are literally many dozens of methods of recovering climate data from human records and paleoclimate records.There is this whole field of science called statistics and data analysis, try looking into it some time.

And? Are you trying to prove that cyanide won't kill you because vacuum does? An increase in temperature can be caused by many things, and neither of them disproves that the others don't. Also, Greenland is just one place. When climate scientists talk about global warming, they're referring mostly to global accumulated heat rather than to local temperatures. Local temperatures in individual places can have the same peaks or valleys of equal magnitude. Or, they can have peaks and valleys of lesser or greater magnitudes. Or, in some places, they can even go in completely different directions.

Certainly no catastrophic AGW, humans do well in warm times. Cold is cop failures, starvation, and freezing to death.

Hey, if you want to go down the "let's make anecdotal evidence out of isolated data points" road, two can play this game. Look how your Greenland data have temperature spikes where Egyptian First and Second Intermediate Periods and European Bronze Age Collapse lie.

What I find interesting is the conclusion of your linked article which mentions that it has been much warmer in the past, but restates the supposed dangers of AGW.

The article's conclusion is illogical.

Given the occurrences of much warmer periods in the past (no matter how catastrophic such warming might be to the billions of people now on the planet) there is no technological basis upon which to expect mankind now posses the capability to stop such warmer temperatures from occurring.

Bill Nye made the point repeatedly that no, of course we can not observe directly with our biological sensing apparatuses the world of 1000 years ago, but we can create a fairly educated surmise of the reality based on what we observe today, combining bench studies with field observations, etc. Ken Ham's argument, repeatedly, was "We weren't there, so we can't know to any useful degree (degree, get it?) what it was like."

Science may be wrong about the anthropogenic nature of global warming, but science is quite clear and confident in its conclusion. Given Science's track record so far, I'm going to bet on it.

Be careful putting too much faith in almighty science. They've been wrong before, you know. A lot. And people died because of it.

You show a bunch of ideas that, when exposed to science, got shot down as objectively wrong pretty quickly. Sounds like the process works.

Want to list 6 current sciency ideas that are wrong but the scientific community considers reasonable? I'll give you a few to start you off:

1. Humans are not changing the climate. Current verdict: wrong. Supporters: a few loons. Evidence: about nil.2. Evolution is wrong. Current verdict: wrong. Supporters: a few loons. Evidence: nil.3. Vaccines cause autism. Current verdict: wrong. Supporters: a few loons. Evidence: nil.

I'm sure Slashdot2114 will be debating the bad science ideas that existed in 2014. Some will claim history shows science is death. Smarter people will note that imbeciles, public relations people, lobbyists, and trolls have always added noise and generally slowed the dissemination of knowledge.

I do not know anyone who supports this. What we do support is that humans do not change the global temperature with their activities in any meaningful way compared with the other natural phenomena like solar irradiation, etc. The percentage of change humans cause with their activities is so small it might as well be totally irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

Spontaneous generation comes to us by way of Aristotle. It was finally challenged by the emerging field of science.

Lamarckian inheritance was not borne out by empirical evidence, so was effectively discounted. Modern understanding of genetics does recognize some mechanisms that resemble Lamarckian inheritance.

Miasma is an ancient greek magical revenge curse. Emperical scientists like Ignaz Semmelweiss worked away from that idea. For his trouble, he ended up dismissed from his position and replaced by Carl Braun, who stopped the handwashing program Semmelweiss had started and introduced a ventilation system to extract miasmas. The death rate went back up by an order of magnitude from when Semmelweiss was in charge.

Bloodletting goes back to belief in the four humours, which comes down from Hippocrates. Science is what has partially dispelled these ideas in modern times.

Aether is the fifth of the traditional Greek four elements. Once again, the idea comes down from fairly non-scientific thought. The name has cropped up to describe a number of different concepts in science, generally to describe something that may fill the universe in spaces in between regular matter. Science has mostly ruled out most of those theories. The general idea still lives on a bit in concepts such as the quantum foam.

On the contrary, if you actually read the article (for example), you'd note that it is about testing the causality of *all* prior changes to the climate, and see if they are sufficient to explain current changes. Notice how you missed that?

No, the original statement is a fabrication so the conclusion is a non-sequitur.

The original statement from rubycodez was as follows:

we cannot ascertain the temperatures of past centuries with enough precision to make any such study nor claims

That's not a fabrication. That's just wrong. Calling it a fabrication bestows too much grace on it.

Sadly, the anti-science (and particularly anti-AGW) crowd has no shortage of wrong statements, because unlike scientists, they are not tethered to facts.

We may not have direct records but that's not what the paper presents. Science is not always able to have first-hand accounts, but only indirect data sources, and yet we rely on it for a shocking amount of findings. Will you start dismissing those as well because they don't suit your agenda? Because an agenda it must be, for you to make such unreasonable demands and yet draw unrelated conclusions from them, while trusting other science based on similar methods.

This. Claiming that indirect evidence does not count is a desperate, sophomoric attempt by the anti-science crowd.

Recall the recent debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham on the theory of evolution. One of Ken Ham's favourite strategies was an attempt to make a distiction between "observational" science and "historical" science, with the latter being invalid in his opinion. How often did we hear him say "you don't know, you weren't there" in response to indirect evidence?

What if, after the debate, Ken Ham had walked to the parking lot of his museum and discovered that the driver-side front fender of his car was damaged, with debris from his front driver-side headlight strewn on the ground? He would no doubt conclude that someone hit his car while he was parked there. But not so fast, Mr. Ham. Let's apply your own standards of evidence: You don't know. You weren't there.

Hopefully in a journal that is reviewed by skeptics rather than Ideologues.

All scientific journals are reviewed by skeptics.

That's because all scientists are skeptics.

Wacky global warming deniers are not skeptics, they are credulous fools.

Skeptics look at the evidence before making their minds up, and change their minds if new evidence comes to light.

Deniers deny. Disprove one nutty theory and the continue denying with another, often incompatible nutty theory. This sometimes goes around in circles 'till they come back to the first, already disproven, theory.

That is nothing but bullshit. I am a scientist. My bread and butter is getting stuff published.

Scientists are just people who persevered long enough with education to get a PhD and continue on. We are as stupid as the rest of humanity. We believe things without data or proof*. Without even logic. We have dogma and lifetime carrier invested viewpoints. We have truthiness about what is bad science and good.

We are just other people. Don't be the fool and assume we know better.

Hopefully in a journal that is reviewed by skeptics rather than Ideologues.

All scientific journals are reviewed by skeptics.

That's because all scientists are skeptics.

This is just patently false.

James Hansen, one of the leading scientist sitting on top of the time series, called for trials of energy company executives for "high crimes against humanity and nature". When a human commits himself to such political ambitions, it becomes much harder to objectively accept position which would undermine the strong political stand he's taking.

Or how about the personification of "climate scientist", Michael Mann? Well, he refers to his fellow scientist who are not sharing his prec

Oh this is rich. The AC calling the scientists ignorant about how the peer review process works. Nice try AC, but GP is right, peer reviewers systematically try to tear pretty much anything that comes their way to shreds. I'm a scientists, and not only do I see this happening to my papers, I do the same to the papers I get to review. Extremely critical reviewers are an essential part of the scientific process.

Contrary to GP, I feel it's normal that it's so difficult to get a paper published. What is not normal is that scientists are under such high pressure to get so many papers published per year; the process could benefit from some "slowing down". But that's an entirely different discussion.

I basically accept that it is very likely that we are f*ing things up with CO2 emissions.

Yet the more I see what is happening with this evolution of an inquisitional attitude of "we understand the science, and you are just stupid and pro-oil" then I am growing disgusted and increasingly distrustful. Once you develop this attitude, then your rationality goes out the window. They have become just as religious now.

On this basis, I would confidently predict that IF serious evidence presents itself co

"97%+ of geologists agreed the continents were stable. It was Settled Science. Hundreds of research papers supported it. Overwhelming consensus. And wrong. And, oddly (not really, if you think about it a moment), it was not a geologist but a meteorologist, Alfred Wegener, who ultimately showed all the mutually agreeing geologists they had it all wrong; the continents move." - Dr. Michael K. Oliver

Hopefully in a journal that is reviewed by skeptics rather than Ideologues.

Well, this just goes to show your utter ignorance of the scientific process in practice.

It turn out that scientits are much like normal people: given a it of power and the veil of anonymity (i.e. as a reviewer), they often act like utter assholes. Basically, there are plenty of reviews out there who love tearing any prospective author a new one, for good reasons or bad. They love nothing more than tearing someone's work to shreds.

Yes, really they should have started the study at the year 1364, to get more years into the mix. That 1364 is about the start of the Little Ice Age, rather than starting in the middle of it as they do, is entirely beside the point, and should not affect the results at all. Six hundred and fifty years containing most of a period of excessive cold is a far better case of "Cherry-picking" than a mere five hundred.

Well, when Dr. Benjamin Santer [wikipedia.org], winner of the McArthur award because of his findings related to AGW, sets 17 years as what is needed to determine the trend [wattsupwiththat.com], don't be surprised when we reach that timeline with no warming and then take the good Doctor at his word - there is a pause in global warming, and we only need 17 years to make that determination.

If "we cannot ascertain the temperatures of past centuries with enough precision to make any such study or claims", then we cannot ascertain that there has been a "Little Ice Age" in the first place - we're using the same methods to measure it! Conversely, if our proxy measurements about the "Little Ice Age" are trustworthy, then so are the ones for the preceding centuries and millennia. The axe swings both ways, you can't have one and not have the other.

I suppose you can't ascertain whether the universe was created 5 seconds ago either. Fortunately the laws of physics, chemistry, thermodynamics, biology, etc. allow science to make Predictions not only about the future outcome of an event, but also about the probability of circumstances which caused observable outcomes.

If you leave your sandwich near me and come back to find a bite taken out of it, would you accept the argument, "You cannot ascertain the intake of past consumption with enough precision to absolutely blame me for eating your sandwich", or would you say I'm full of shit?

Agreed, and 500 years is not really a large enough sample on a planet that is billions of years old either. Now we could make the argument from civilization on or say a number more like 50K years. and on top of that we are using different methods of obtaining the temprature today then we have in the past, be it better tools, or monitors in different locations. I still want more information because I am willing to concede that the temp is going up, I dont agree with the reason for it, or the options people

> Agreed, and 500 years is not really a large enough sample on a planet that is billions of years old either

Yes, it is. Given that it has strong annual cycles, solar fluctuations with sun spots, and measurable cycles of _much_ shorter than 500 years that have already demonstrated their success in agricultural and urban planning, the existing record has already demonstrated its usefulness and effectiveness. Extending it _in detailed prediction_ is not feasible for such a chaotic system. Even biological ch

Its called data reconstruction, and the existing large scale records factor use multiple proxy methods of records of reconstructing the temperature records.There are multiple indirect ( or proxy ) ways of obtaining temperature history, and all of these would have to be invalidated to prove the existing reconstructions wrong.The reconstruction models match with accurate instrument measurements that we have for a past hundred years or so.

>> with a proposed burden of proof that claims to immunize it against questioning or any part

wtf are you on about ? Every historical data record is carefully examined and questioned, and compared to other data sources. Every discrepancy is investigated.Go ahead, and go question the things like CLIWOC, RECLAIM and ICOADS database, ships and farmers logs, alpine peatland records, ice cores, tree rings, pollen calibration, coral growth, sediments etc etc. Its being done by climate scientists and climate

There are dozens of ways of obtaining indirect climate data, and they are already compiled into comprehensive databases. You would have to show more than one of them being substantially wrong to disprove the full reconstructions.These data sets are continuously reviewed, amended and further improved by thousands of people around the world.You want to call all of it "questionable data" - please publish your papers.

People who actually work in the field and spend decades of their life in this dedicated study have a vested interest in reaching a positive conclusion. If they found that there was no man-made global warming, they'd be out of jobs.

And yet SETI aren't reporting any alien contacts.

You're full of shit. There is MORE money available for any scientist that publishes papers that say there is no global warming. Oil companies are rich, and there are few qualified scientists willing to take their preferred side of the argument. And the reason they aren't taking this easy money? Because the science to say global warming isn't happening isn't there. It's easy to write blogs or newspaper articles denying it. It's impossible to write proper scientific papers that do so.

There are climate scientist, and most of them work on climate models. The physicists in TFA are working the same problem from a different angle: statistics (and coming to the same conclusions). They won't profit from more money being invested in climate models, though, falsifying the assumption on which the post I originally replied to was based. Not that such an obvious troll really needs falsifying.

So what do we have to give up to have a zero change in the global temperature

Only one thing: having so many offspring.

The problem isn't that we have an excessive lifestyle. The problem is that there are TOO MANY of us having an excessive lifestyle. Get the population down to a billion or so and we can all have diesels, coal-fired power stations and as much beef as we could ever desire.

You mean accurate temperature records up to 1987, before they shut off the majority of the weather stations (83% and growing) and started to rely on atmospheric satellite data that has lower accuracy rates spread over much larger areas?

And the remaining weather stations turned out to not be very reliable either, with most being more than 2 degrees Celsius error.

Be honest with yourself. Most temperature records outside of cities don't exist before 1977, especially in countries like the US, Canada, Russia, Australia or Africa. Do you know why? Because there were no stations to record the information.

And that type of ad hoc analysis is supposed to substitude for disinterested scientific investigation? Is that the best you got? Remember when Richard Muller was *sure* that climate scientists were cooking the books on temps, and promised to bring the best science to the problem in BEST? He got funding at the drop of a hat (from Koch), and Anthony Watts/promised/ to abide by Muller's findings. Then Muller's findings disagreed with what Watts wanted, and Muller was a AGW "shill" over night. And you think y

Enlighten me.How does a 500 year data set apply to a 4.5 billion year old planet?

What has led you to this bizarre conclusion that the percentage of the planet's existence is significant?

What postulate of statistics allows asserting accurate predictions from 0.0000001 repeating percent of the full data set?

What "postulate" do you imagine says you can't? I haven't heard but a small fraction of all music ever created. But I can still name a Beatles song in a few notes. The size of "everything" is not relevant to the question.

Could you predict the sentiments of every human on the planet (over 4 billion) by asking the last 500 people born?

Polling is indeed the way that we find out the opinions of people in general. And 500 is indeed a reasonable poll, depending on the question.

What postulate of statistics allows asserting accurate predictions from 0.0000001 repeating percent of the full data set?

It's the postulate of denialism, basically, which involves burying the ovbious flaws in his argument under as much mathematical mumbo-jumo as possible. That prevents enyone with out a sufficiently mathematical background as calling it out as crap.

Anthropogenic warming isn't dangerous to the planet, it's dangerous to us. The timeline of the planet is irrelevant.

Think about it. Could you predict the sentiments of every human on the planet (over 4 billion) by asking the last 500 people born?

Yes, for an analogous meaning of "predict" as applies to the AGW scenario, ie. not predict precise emotions and behaviour at any given instant, but predict general trends with a certain probability distribution. What do you think psychology is all about? They conduct surveys and studies of small a percentage of the population to find correlations and establish general trends about humanity, like what makes people happy, angry, sad, how they respond to trauma, etc.

Where I live (Illinois) I can choose to pay slightly more for my power generation dollars to go to renewable generators. I dug a little deeper and verified that it comes mostly from wind and some solar. I also think its a misconception that electric cars put a tremendous load on the grid. Unlike our central air conditioning in the summer, we hardly noticed an increase in our electric bill after we got our Tesla.

We sacrificed other things so we could buy what was for us a swing for the fences dream car. Thank you everyone for the tax subsidy. And you are welcome for our support of the Tesla strategy to get the cost of electric cars low enough so that gas cars don't make sense.

Ha ha ha! Your reference to this "being no myth" is a site that is guest hosting Ann Coulter, and calls Global Warming a myth! Thanks for demonstrating my point so well. The bird killing aspect of wind turbines is just a myth made up by the same anti-science people that deny global warming.

And, BTW, fracking has been around since the 40's. Whats you're problem? Are you one of those enviros that opposes everything?

I would have thought the fact that I said build nuclear would have answered that for you. And I don't care whether fracking has been around since the 1840s, it's an environmental blight and a serious health problem.

the damn commies in China

You're a fucking imbecile. No wonder you linked to a Ann Coulter supporting site.

CFACT is not a remotely reliable source, nor to they cite any such source. Google Scholar is usually good at finding real research papers on the topic. This [ace-eco.org] is the top hit for 2013, and while it finds some bird mortality due to wind turbines, it estimates the effect to be much lower than that of other anthropogenic risks for birds, even assuming a 10-fold increase in wind turbines.

There is no silver bullet, nor will we ever manage to return the planet to Garden of Eden conditions. But "there is no single

Exactly. The solution to both the western dependence on oil and the contribution our nations make towards greenhouse emissions is nuclear power with a fuel reprocessing cycle. Perfect? Not by a long shot, but it would certainly have given us some breathing space; time enough to get our cars off oil, invest in solar, geo, tidal and wind power.

However it didn't work out like that because the no-nuke greenies stepped on the neck of nuclear power, effectively stopping it cold. We're resourceful buggers so we di

I already own a Prius; it makes good sense for 99% of my driving being in urban traffic alone. But 500 years is not enough to claim that all climate change is due to manmade sources; you need to go at least 2 million years of climate data to eliminate mankind. And in addition to that 500 years isn't even enough to cover one full ice age cycle. I call confirmation bias on this one.

500 years is not enough time to properly determine how climates develop, but 10 years is?

Additionally, the effect of CO2 on the climate is cumulative, and climate changes slowly. The last ten years of emissions pales in comparison to the stretch of time from now back to the start of the industrial revolution.